Aloha Goa

10 things to do when you're on a beach in Goa:

1. Talk with other travellers
2. Drink beer
3. Sleep in
4. People watch
5. Go swimming
6. Play cricket on the beach
7. Get a Royal Enfield motorbike and cruise the shoreline roads
8. Break down on an Enfield motorbike miles from anywhere
9. Save a girl's life
10. Get arrested by the Indian police

Click here to see the photos

So here I am, in Goa, on Palolem beach. It's a nice chilled beach, in the south of the region, away from the main tourist center in the north that's filled with bars and trance clubs on the beaches. Matt and I arrived by train in Margao and took an hour bus ride down to Palolem. Found a nice little hut operation called D'Costa at the north end of the beach, away from the couple of late night bars at the south end of the beach. The huts are simple bamboo and plywood constructions, which doesn't leave a huge amount of privacy as gaps here and there allow anyone willing enough to take a peek inside. The doors are pretty secure though, and there's always people around to prevent break ins and thefts. There's a restaurant attached to the hut operation, with some really friendly Nepalese waiters (Shuman and Utam) and cooks. The whole place is run by an Indian family that live behind the site. I've got myself probably the hut with the nicest view in the encampment, the only one facing forward towards the beach and sea. Electricity is off twice as much as it is on here. In the evenings, we carry a torch or candle to the shared toilets when it's down. I've showered once in pitch black, with the water running out. It's all part of the life here, and I'm enjoying it.
The beach here is lovely, stretching almost 2 km, fringed with coconut trees, speckled with fishing boats, with a lagoon on the north end. The water isn't clear blue here, which is a shame. The guide books call it a paradise beach, but I guess I've been spoilt by places like Koh Tao.
The first couple of days we met some lovely people staying at the same place. Andrew Short, a professional photographer living in Bath working for Future Publishing, who had also lived in Hong Kong for 9 years working for the South China Morning Post and The Standard. He spent time in Bosnia during the war too. Chris, a fantastic travelling/trekking American from Seattle, one of the nicest Americans I have ever met. Ami, an Israeli waitress was good fun to talk to, and Yoav a guy from Jerusalem who has been travelling India for 6 months. They weren't your typical Israeli backpackers that people moan about.
They've all left now, within a couple of days of Matt and I arriving. We got to know a lovely French woman called Leo, who works helping people quit smoking. Yes, she's had a go at me already! Matt, Leo and I hung out the last week here.
Life here is very basic, simple and fun at times. Most days I sit in the bamboo restaurant, gazing out over the beach. We've visited some interesting places around Palolem, including the bat caves, where some rocks plunge into the sea. About half an hour after the sun disappears over the horizon, dozens of bats start to flit in and out of the gaps in between the rocks, missing your head by millimeters. It's quite an experience, and a beautiful sight to witness.
Days meld from one to the next here. I sometimes find it difficult to remember what happened the day before, unless we did something interesting. It's nice to just relax back and do nothing the whole day. Sometimes I play cricket with the staff on the beach, and other travellers join in from time to time.
The week has had its interesting days though. After Andy, Chris, Ami and Yoav (who turns out is the nephew of Benjamin Netanyahu) left, I hooked up with a British guy called George Netherington whilst playing cricket on the beach and through him, met Sarah, Leela and Emma. George is your typical toff. Went to public school (St. Paul's in London in fact, where my Aunt Linda works, and where I had attended Colet Court, the pre-prep school), lives in Holland Park, has very rich parents ("Daddy has a house in Holland Park, and Mummy lives in Chelsea"), and has an air of positive arrogance around him, but he is funny to talk to. Sarah is a gap year student, a real wild child who does what she wants. I'm sure she's born 40 years too late. She struck out on her own after a bust up with her best friends in Vietnam. Leela and Emma are both graduates, travelling before finding work back in England.
We all went out for a big night out at one of the bars here as it was George's 22nd birthday, meeting up with three other English guys, Andy, James and Paul, whom I had seen on the bus into Palolem. Went to a reggae night at the Titanic bar, where I was rudely rebuked by the MC for asking for a birthday announcement for George ("Birthday announcement? What the f*ck would I do that for? Why is it so f*cking precious to you?"). Oh well. Moved on to another bar, Cafe del Mar and drank till 7am, watching the sunrise, and met Anil, a hut manager, a true easy going Goan local, and Harley, an English guy who DJs in Palolem.
Spent most of the next day sleeping and recovering needless to say. Coincidentally bumped into Andrea, a Canadian paramedic Matt had been chatting to in Jaisalmer. She had checked into the huts right next door to ours. After Sarah, George, Emma and Leela left Goa, Matt, Leo, Andrea and I hung out together for the next couple of days.
Spent one morning with Andrea and her friend Nick taking a boat out to sea to see the dolphins and go snorkelling of a remote beach. Turned out the beach was sh*t and visibility was zero for snorkelling! We sat in the shade for 3 hours waiting for the boat to come back so we could leave. I got so bored, I built a miniature forest out of twigs and leaves for the crabs to take cover.
Took a bicycle with Leo and Matt that afternoon, once Andrea and Nick left Goa, and rode 40 minutes to Agonda beach, just north of Palolem. Lovely, quiet, unspoilt stretch of beach with big waves. Maybe 20 people on a 2km stretch of sand, with none of the huts, restaurants and boats you see on Palolem beach. We mucked around in the surf for an hour so before heading back.
The next day, I hired a Royal Enfield 350cc Bullet Machismo motorbike, something a motorbike enthusiast must do if visiting India. It would be sacriligeous to forego the experience! Must admit, I was very nervous about riding it. I haven't ridden a manual bike with a clutch in 4 years, and it's a big hefty mother too. When I pulled away, I did so a bit too quickly, releasing the clutch into 1st gear to fast. Got used to it very soon though and it's a real pleasure to ride, hearing the roaring engine, and the occasional backfire from the exhaust whenever I eased off the accelerator.
I was only going to ride as far as Agonda beach, which I visited the day before on bicycle, as I was only out for a quick test ride before lunch, but as I got there so fast, and was enjoying the ride so much, I ended up continuing on for more than 25-30km, almost all the way to Cabo-D-Rama fort, 40km away from Palolem. I stopped the bike on a hill to admire the fantastic palm tree covered hillside plunging into the Arabic Sea below. I smoked a cigarette in the scorching sun, wishing I had brought my camera with me, then hopped back on the bike to return.
That's when I noticed something was wrong. I couldn't find neutral gear, essential to start the engine, and found the gear shifter by my left foot very loose. After a minute or two, I managed to find neutral, kick-started the bike, but could only get up to 2nd gear, as the gear shifter seemed to have totally come loose. It wasn't until I reached Saleri, a tiny village half way back to Palolem, where the bike stalled and stopped that I realised what had happened. As I was overtaking a bus, with plenty of time and space, an oncoming car decided not to let me finish my overtaking maneouver and sped up, forcing me off the side of the road into the dirt. Since I couldn't change gear, and I had stopped the bike, the engine stalled in 2nd gear.
For 5 minutes, I could not restart the bike, as the gear shifter just wouldn't go into neutral. That's when I put the Enfield on it's stand, and took a close look at the gear shifter. The flick bar that you use to change gear had been broken before, and spot welded to the shaft into the gear box. The weld was a tiny spot of metal, only a few millimeters across, and had easily cracked, so the foot bar couldn't grip the gear shaft. I kind of panicked. I was some 20km away from Palolem with a bike that I couldn't start.
Luckily, a man in a shop spotted my dilemna and pointed me to a motorbike repair shop 20 meters down the road. After fetching the repairman, full of hope, he took one glance at the foot bar and shook his head, declaring I needed a welder. Where the hell was I going to find a spot welder, in a tiny village consisting of about 10 thatch huts and 4 shops, miles from any town? Hey, this is India! There just so happened to be one right across the road from where I stood! Life can really deal some nice little hands sometimes.
So 10 minutes later, and 14 rupees less, I had a working Enfield again and returned swiftly back to Palolem for a very late lunch with Matt and Leo, sharing my motorbike adventure with them.
That afternoon we went out to Agonda beach again to escape the crowds, the two riding bicycles and me on my full charactered Enfield. It wasn't going to be the only adventure of the day. The evening was still to come, and with it, probably the most harrowing experience I have ever had.
Nine years ago, back at Imperial College, when I was staying in Beit Hall, a friend of mine, Cem Eyi had gotten immensely drunk. Martin Frowde and I carried him back to his room upstairs and put him to bed with me keeping watch as he was in a real state, breathing fast and shallow, shaking and tossing and turning. Gurjen, the sub-warden of the halls, and two security guards supervised and left me to it. Not 5 minutes after they left, as I sat by Cem's bed reading a book, he suddenly went silent and still. I checked his breathing and it had stopped. Needless to say, I panicked. I wanted to start doing CPR, but had no idea how to. I had never been trained in it. I ran out the room and to the staircase where, thank God, Gurjen and the two security guards were still talking. One of the guards resuscitated Cem and called an ambulance. I vowed then that should such a situation ever arise again, I would not panic, and have the training to perform CPR. It wasn't until last year, 2005, that I did my Emergency First Response course for my Rescue Diver qualification. And thankfully, it's still fresh in my mind.
So the evening after the motorbike incident, I had dinner with Matt and Leo, feeling tired from the day's sun. I had promised Harley that I would pay a call on him at the Dancing Shiva bar at the south end of the beach as he was DJing. After dinner, Leo retired to bed and Matt headed off to the internet shop. I decided to head down for one beer to be courteous, as I was very tired. On the way, I noticed some football showing on a television in a bar a couple of places before the Dancing Shiva, and since I couldn't find Harley there, I popped into the bar to find Arsenal, the team I support, playing Aston Villa. During the match, I met Brendon, a 40 something British man, well built, shaved head, and a well spoken accent. He now lives in India, having retired from a life of crime as a gangster in London. He managed the ticket touting scene through the whole of Soho during his time and made a fortune before quitting into international ar dealing (also a form of money laundering for criminals). We had a long and interesting conversation about the philosophy of life and his past experiences, and found him to be highly intelligent and well educated, a man of much experience in life. We chatted long as the football match on TV concluded, Arsenal winning 5-0 much to my delight.
I was just finishing my second and final beer before heading to bed, when a blood curdling scream ripped through the air, very close to the bar. It went on for 15-20 seconds, the kind of scream from a girl that holds terror, desperation and a distinct cry for help in it's echoes. As Brendon and I looked at each other, I realised we were thinking exactly the same thing. Rape. It took not half a second for us to launch ourselves off our bar seats and down the stairs to the beach to find a few people standing in the sand, staring up at a hut right next to the bar. As Brendon and I approached, we noticed the hut shaking violently on it's stilts, the screams from the girl endlessly continuing. Brendon was first up the stairs to the door of the raised hut and began ramming the door with his broad shoulders. As I stood behind him, I noticed through a tiny gap between the door and the jamb that rape was not the case here. I could clearly see a local Indian girl, in her 20's, fully clothed, rolling around on the floor, eyes open and screaming violently. I knew then that she was either freaking out on drugs or having some sort of fit.
At that moment, the manager of the huts arrived and implored Brendon not to break the door down, his livelihood and cost of repairs much more of a concern to him than a person in trouble. I quickly explained to Brendon what I had seen inside, and suggested pulling away the flimsy rattan wall to reach round and unlock the door from the inside. Within seconds we were in, along with about 4 or 5 local men behind us there only as onlookers and an English woman called Lucy, who declared she was a psychiatric nurse. I stepped back to let her through to the girl on the floor, and she knelt down to cradle the girl's head. I asked if I could help her in any way as I was a qualified EFR and to my surprise, she told me to take charge as she had no first aid qualifications.
The first thing I did was ask if anyone was a doctor, or someone to find one. I lay the girl in the recovery position, Lucy holding and stroking her hair whilst whispering soothing words into her ear. The Indian girl still had her eyes wide open, unblinking the whole time, her arms outstretched grasping the air whilst calling for someone named Zahid in between her fast and shallow breaths. That's when I looked up and noticed an unconscious man on the bed for the first time. I yelled at Brendon to check on the guy, he was fine. Next I yelled at everyone to leave the room, and with Brendon's brawn, he cleared the room. I asked him to keep both the balcony door and front door open to facilitate the ventilation through the room. Turning my attention back to the girl on the floor, I checked her pulse which was a rapid 120 beats per minute. I used the torch in my bag to check the response of her pupils which seemed normal. Her temperature seemed fine too, so I started to rule out drugs, although not entirely. You can never be sure, especially with all the varieties of local intoxicants out here.
At that point I heard another girl, also a local, say she was the girl's friend. I immediately started asking her questions, the girl's name (which I have now forgotten), what, if any drugs she had taken, how much she had to drink, what she had to eat, what she had done that day, and the events before she came back to the hut. After a minute or two, I had discerned she had had half a bottle of tequila and 5 beers that night, with no dinner, no drugs that her friend knew of, that she had been in the sun all day and drank very little water. I still didn't really know what to do. I started to panic. If only Andrea had been there, she was a paramedic! I asked someone to call the doctor or hospital. I felt like I couldn't handle the situation and she wasn't improving at all. Then I remembered to ask her friend if the girl was on any medications, and she told me she had taken some antibiotics and showed them to me. She had taken Ciprofloxacin and Tinidazole, and another pill labelled as an analgesic and antispasmodic. That made me ask if she was prone to epileptic fits, to which the answer was no. It then occured to me, with her rapid shalow breathing, to ask if she was asthmatic. Bingo! She was. I asked her friend if she knew where she kept her inhaler, and luckily her bag was in the the room. The friend started going through the bag so slowly, that I grabbed it out of her hands and emptied the contents on the floor to locate it. I got Lucy to pinch the girl's nose shut as I clamped her lips around the inhaler and released one puff. Her breathing inproved almost immediately, becoming deeper and more shallow. 10 seconds later, I gave her a second puff. She was still calling out for her boyfriend Zahid (I found out from the friend) who was the guy passed out in bed. I then told her female friend and two male friends who had arrived that she should be taken to hospital to be checked up on and cleared by a doctor as I didn't think her friends could watch over her the entire night. Apparently, one of the had a car, but before we could move her, I had to try and stop her freaking out, as she was still wide-eyed, calling for her boyfriend and not responding to any of us. I used a trick I learned from a paramedic years ago, rolling a pen hard over her fingernail, delivering a sharp, intense shock of pain to her system. It worked very well, she screamed again from the pain, but turned her eyes to me and began blinking, no longer calling for her boyfriend. Two guys picked her up, ready to carry her down the stairs when she suddenly complained of a pain in her side. I told the guys to lay her in bed, and it occured to me she had probably rolled off the side of the bed, onto the floor, injuring herself, making her freak out and bring on her asthma attack. She was calm in bed, in the recovery position, when suddenly two burly men entered shouting at us and asking Brendon, Lucy and I who we were. They identified themselves as Goan police with badges. Brendon proclaimed we were there to help the girl and that I was a medic. Before I could correct Brendon's mistake, the cop turned to me and said, "You doctor? Where is you license?!". I told him I was not a doctor, and before I could tell him I was only an EFR he shouted, "She is Indian citizen! If anything happens to her, I will arrest you!!", pointing right at me. I pulled out my EFR card and produced it to him and I just lost my temper. I asked him if he had a mobile phone to which he replied positively. I demanded he call a doctor or hospital, as noone had seemed to do so, so far. To my surprise, he complied and went downstairs mobile in hand. I reckoned he didn't know how to help, had probably not even done first aid, and was worried if the situation worsened, he could be blamed, so tried to pin the blame on us instead.
After he left, I turned my attention back to the girl, and everything from the night with Cem came flooding back. The girl had stopped breathing. I had to perform CPR on her. Her pulse was slowing. Everything from my course came back to me, little things I had forgotten. Listen for breathing. Give two rescue breaths with 5 seconds in between each. Check breathing. Another two. Check breathing. Another two. Check breathing....
She started breathing again. Within a minute, she started another asthma attach, and with Lucy's help we administered another two puffs to her from her inhaler. I asked Lucy to watch over her for a moment and climbed downstairs to tell the policeman what had happened and to get a doctor over as soon as possible.
That's when I got the shock of my life. The minute I mentioned she had stopped breathing, he grabbed my arm and screamed at me that I was under arrest for the death of the girl. As the handcuffs came off his belt, I felt a surge of anger so strong, I yanked myself free from his grip just as the cuff was about to hit my wrist. I ran up the stairs, turned back to him and screamed at him to check on the girl, that she was okay, and I was just trying to explain to him what had happened. And thank God he did, instead of arresting me again. She was fast asleep, breathing normally, her eyes finally shut for the first time. I asked the cop if the doctor was on his way, and in a weird turn of events, he said the girl looked fine, and wouldn't need a doctor. He let me go, but took some of the friends of the girl to the local station for questioning.
Brendon, Lucy, the female friend of the girl and I were left in the hut with the girl and her boyfriend fast asleep in bed. I was nervous about helping out more after the police involvement, and gave the girl's friend some directions to looking after her friend, to check her breathing once in a while, to keep two bottles of room temperature water by the bed and keep the inhaler handy.
I retired back to the bar with Brendon and Lucy, to rapturous praise and applause from the staff and some travellers who had watched the events. As I sat and talked to Brendon and Lucy about our efforts, beers and drinks were bought for us by almost everyone, including the hut manager. I didn't feel heroic or that I had done anything amazing. I guess I should have. I just felt damn tired, exhausted, relieved. My heart was still pumping, and adrenaline still coursing through my veins. This is just a fraction of what doctors and paramedics go through, and I have the utmost respect for them.
I stayed for almost an hour in the bar, checking on the girl every 15 minutes before saying my farewells and heading back to my hut. She just needed some sleep. I'm sure she woke up with a stonking hangover the next day.
In contrast, the rest of the time here has been so simple. Visiting the bat caves and other beaches, watching people walk by on the beach as I lie back, smoke and have a drink, thinking about nothing and everything as I stare out at the sea's horizon for hours.
Life plays it's little twists and games with everyone. I sit, in the evening, at a candlelit table in the sand, listening to the waves tumbling lightly upon the shore, the stars and constellations bright above. I came here to relax and spend time thinking after all the hub-bub of the cities, only to find it injected with a day of hijinx, adventure and some real pant staining moments. It really makes you think, someone, something, fate, God, or some un-nameable entity really is playing with and testing part of you all the time. Despite what you think, life can really have an unescapeable control on you, throwing you into the most unsuspecting situations in the weirdest places, and the coincidents and luck that comes along at times make you think and feel much more aware of life and it's unexpected turns. Today I find myself taking the things given to you with more acceptance, and find myself fighting against them less and less.
Life is good, if you're good to life.

Matt left yesterday. I've been travelling with him for the past 5 weeks, and he's become a very good friend. I'm gonna miss you mate, and I'll certainly come to see you in Germany soon! It's been a real pleasure to have met you, and known you as a friend. I don't think I would have survived India the first few weeks without you. But there's one thing I'd like you to remember Matt. England WILL beat Germany in the World Cup. There's no two ways about it.

Once Leo leaves today, I'll finally be on my own for the first time in India. I haven't gotten to know any of the others here. I think it's all winding to a close anyhow. The high season is drawing to a close, the beach is getting less and less crowded, the sun is getting hotter. Before the week is through, I'll most probably move on either to Hampi or Cochi.